England, "what do I know of how you think if you're a highland Scot and English is your second language. "I felt as though I was treading on somebody else's territory-- all the time," she said. But in other ways, Mrs. Lunn found she could relate to some of the feelings of the people she spoke to. When it came time to write, that f irst-hand under- standing proved invaluable. "Where your own feet have been, when they have gripped the ground, then you have been in that place. If you've only looked at it through a window, you haven't really been there." She said that "one of the things that was very real for me, that real ly came from the bone marrow, was the sense of having to leave the hills. I've never got over that, having to leave the hills. In Scotland, my feet knew how to do that country, and Scottish friends of mine who go to New England say 'Oh, 1 see, of course'. "The climate's not the same and, therefore, the things that grow there are not the same. We don't have heather all over the hills in Norwich, Vermont. But they're both old, worn hills. It's the same. There's a spirit hill people have," no matter what country they are in. Janet came to realize that the highland Scots and the hill people of Vermont had similar ways of looking at the world, of dealing with life. "If you live in a harsh climate, there's a certain type of personality that emerges-- uncompromising, perhaps. Tough." Chuckling at the memory, the 58- year-old author said that while she grew to understand some of the style of the highland Scots, she found it difficult to get information from them. "I'm very at home with the highland Scots, and I love them," she said. The feeling gave her "a terrible responsibility to get them right, and I didn't. They won't let you. ft'/t: Janet (Alfred) September 1(^4, age ^ years, on her firsl ilny o/ school. "I rrwrmlnT w\ ncir slio( 's," sht1 S(f\ .s. Ht ' lnu1 : ' f ' h f rot TV of t l i f sojuom edition of her widely-iicclirimed l ( ) 8 l novel, The Root Cellar. ( ) / > / > o s i t r : flu* f m m s ' Pft'iiscftif H < i v home im.s t lu1 m.s|MWtion /<» The Root Cellar . Her husband, Richard, ,s<nr ihe #host of <m old inmum JitTt', < m < l omv hcanl /HT fF* 26 County Magazine